What is a Mental Health Interpreter?

Translators are wizards. They take one language and turn it into another, thus promoting understanding and a greater sense of knowing and being known. As an interpreter helps two different parties realize how similar they are, growth and celebration is born.

But interpreters and translators aren’t reserved for only navigating straightforward language barriers. Consider mental health clinicians and the people seeking treatment. Now think about the layers and methods that this relationship needs. The clinical practice of therapy and medicine is completely different from the business practice of therapy and medicine.

Let that sink in.

While clinicians have struggled mightily about if our field should be considered “a business” or not, there is no denying that good business skills give us the opportunity to scale good clinical practice and access to quality mental healthcare. Navigating the language and ideas surrounding this conversation is a vital step in addressing it all.

Key to success for any clinician is to surround oneself with lots of mental health interpreters: marketing and sales experts who can translate a clinician’s vision into digestible snippets for non-clinicians to understand. Remember, once we identify where things overlap and understand more of the other “language”, then recognition and development occur.

Clinicians have a tough time translating for themselves; you’d think it would be easy to find a translator. 

Wrong.

Our industry is underdeveloped and thus, we lack the infrastructure to support those people. This results in stagnation. Bigger health systems and corporations do support these people; generally, they’re known as “business development.” For solo and small group practices, leveraging the funds and expertise to recruit, hire, and retain a business development officer is almost impossible.

Simply Psych has business development built into its practice support model. Whether it’s marketing (website, digital ads, social media, etc.) or sales (how to interact with patients, what the patient experience is like, etc.), Simply Psych empowers clinicians to know their proven processes and can offer guidance on best practices for the situation.

Marketing, sales, business development. These mental health interpreters are necessary. In fact, we need more of them. Interested in joining us? Reach out to hello@simplypsych.com.